The few days after his battle Vaeludar felt relatively well, with many people praising him for a heroic action of protecting the village from harm. As more time passed though, Vaeludar started to feel dread and trauma from that experience.
He lived in the village for seventeen years and never had to make a kill. He was considered to be old enough to be recruited into a military.
When the disturbing thought was suddenly brought up, Vaeludar would fly above the village, walked closely to the bordering forest in the south, swim in the ocean shorelines west of the village, and did multiple things at once, to make him forget about the discomfort and pleasure of the killing. He would try to find some way to bury the thought deep away in his brain, but to no avail.
The head of the Minotaur was still at the place where it was hung. Vaeludar paid it no mind, as it would trouble his mind and body even further. He told no one of his mixed feelings, and he didn’t want to.
Playing with the twin girls relatively eased his mind and placed him in a state of joy. Even as babies growing to be toddlers, the twin girls were one of the few kids not afraid of Vaeludar. He liked playing with them and they liked to play with him. The twins saw him as a good, protective big brother and spent most of their time with him.
Vaeludar was happy in keeping the girls happy. While having fun and playing kept the girls and Vaeludar busy, Geraldus could tend to his duties easier, but sometimes his wife would oppose to having the girls playing with the strange creature.
Geraldus refused his wife’s requests and let the twin girls play with the hybrid. The father didn’t care that much, since he was raising Vaeludar and the twin girls under the same roof. He knew Vaeludar would be harmless to the girls, although he did worry about the claws on Vaeludar’s feet that could easily cut his daughters’ skin.
However, Vaeludar was careful enough and didn’t let the baby girls get any cuts. But life came a little harder when his wife had passed away from a sickness a year ago, and the girls began to play with their other siblings instead of Vaeludar.
Vaeludar wasn’t surprised to see the twin girls going away from him and playing with their other brothers; he was quite used to being alone for all his life. But now he had the attention of the entire village looking up to him, if the village came under attack again.
Still playing with the little girls, his thought of his battle a few days ago made him feel like doing some hand-to-hand combat training. As he was flying in the sky, he decided to head to the training grounds. This is where the soldiers of the village would drill daily with bow and arrows, spears, swords, axes, and any other metal weapons that can be held by hand.
The training ground was located to the east, half a mile away from the farmland. There were three large barracks and soldiers training daily. It was the largest military force the Western Region had to offer; Geraldus had about ten thousand men under his command. A large army, but Vaeludar knew that King Uragiru commanded an even larger army.
Vaeludar flew over the training grounds and landed where teenage boys were drilling with blunt swords. On one side was a group of boys not training with the other boys swinging swords, watching the people sweat heavily.
One of them happened to be Alaric, who was standing by watching the boys. He saw Vaeludar walking toward them. “Doing some training today?” asked Alaric.
“Yes, ever since I killed the two-legged cow about a week ago, I haven’t had a moment’s rest,” said Vaeludar. Vaeludar came to look at a load of swords lying on a wooden stack. All of them blunt and dull, not well enough for real battles and soldiers. The swords were good enough for training, even though they could still cause broken bones. “What about you? Fully healed from your little squirm-ish?” Vaeludar joked.
“I didn’t cower from the bull, if that is what you’re trying to say,” said Alaric.
Vaeludar smiled as he picked up a rusty broadsword with one hand. For a human, it would have some weight to it, weighing several pounds. But for Vaeludar, he could carry it with ease. Since he could breathe fire and fight with brute strength, he didn’t need to have proper sword training, but when a necessary action was needed. Swordplay would have to act as a substitute for some violent confrontations.
Vaeludar strolled over to a large figure with large sticks hanging all over its side. This kind of thing was used for training with swords, with the hanging sticks being used as arms. When one blade would hit a stick, the figure would suddenly start to spin with each of the sticks (acting as arms) spinning at random. The person swinging his sword would have to hit each arm before it would hit him.
For Vaeludar, it was as easy as counting sheep. Since he discovered his wings could also be suitable as arms and being able to block a lot of multiple angled arms coming at him, training against this figure was easy. So, he started up with a small swing.
Starting with the one swing from a sideways stick, one stick on the opposite side spun around. Vaeludar quickly reacted and swung the broadsword to that spinning stick. He struck it fast and hard, making it spin the other way and another stick from the opposite end came to Vaeludar’s head.
Vaeludar ducked his head right below and he soon found six sticks
